SL + Vista64 == blah

I don't know what the issue is, but SL runs like a pig on my Vista64 box. Personally I blame Vista64 (which is a like/hate deal (definitely not love/hate)), Drivers, and LL who have proven over many years to be behind the curve with technology (at least to me, the layman). *havok* cough cough

Anywho, looking for suggestions about possible solutions to make the experience a bit more pleasant.

System, homebuilt naturally:
Vista64 Premium (builder's)
Intel c2d E6850
Asus P5N32-E SLI mboard (not using SLI)
Evga 8800GTX (not OC'd, using latest evga drivers -- nVid's suck with DX10 imho)
4G of pc6400 Gskill (2x2G)
xFi-xtremeGamer
...up-to-date drivers for everything.

Setting Affinity to single cores makes matters even worse (to the extreme even), which surpised me -- however this is an Intel CPU, my last box, AMD, benefited well from running on one core.

Now, what happens in SL is *constant* stuttering/jittering. Staring at the Debug "Fast Timers" display shows HUGE spikes at each "jitter". All spikes occur in the Render tree. Primarily in Occlusion, Simple, Alpha, Avatar, and occasionally in UI. Each spike is greater than 100.n, naturally boosting Frames to values > 115. (this with no one around, nothing new other than me standing in my shop picking my nose)

Most spikes are quick, lasting only a fraction of a second, but definitely noticable in game. Occasionally will lock me up for 5+ seconds, as well as a rare crash.

I'd say I get a spike every 0.2 - 1.0 seconds, constantly, they never stop. :p Often multiple spikes occur within a few milliseconds of each other.

Frame rate in game is always good, 50-170fps. I never notice a drop in it during the "jitters"... but that's hard to gauge, seeing how my system's locked up for a sec. However the frame rate does spike like crazy, even staring at the floor (just doesn't noticably drop to low rates). It certainly isn't a constant "60fps" as one might expect, especially when staring a the floor, it'll be 40.0 + llFrand(170.0); :p

So, rendering ... always one of SL's strong points. :p

Anywho, a lot of muttering that probably will get me no where. Still, I seek help if anyone has some tips concerning Vista64 & SL.

--Bos

I run in Vista 32 using a AMD 64 dual core CPU.... I got SL working after finding a god send of a programme that turnned off the anal Account User Control. However, I have noticed the last 2 'updates' for Windlight have suddenly caused my system to freeze for a couple of seconds every 15-20 seconds. It was so bad, that I dropped down to using the standard client which seems stable.

In conclusion, I can only assume LL 'updates' are like most times, downgrades for systems that ran perfectly well previously.

I soak tested my system (also home built) for 24 hours along with the connection/network which gave a clean bill of health.

I have tried the Nocholaz client, but could not get it to work, mainly due to not being able to match the original version client with his client <sighs> guess I will be able to soon.

if you use any 64 bit operating system you better run it in 32-bit-ccompartible-Mode !
SL is still 32 bit only and it will run at half speed in 64-bit mode.

"SL is still 32 bit only and it will run at half speed in 64-bit mode"


Where on earth do you get that from, i been running SL for over a year in 64bit win xp & vista , theres no speed diffrence, and certainly no need to set 32bit compability mode to get faster speed.

Theres zero diffrence in running a 32bit program in a 64bit os, only reason youd see loss of performance is cause 64bit os is really picky about the drivers you have installed.

Only reason to run 64bit is to get the program to use over 2gig limit wich a 32bit have, but SL is stuck in 32bit mode cause LL still havnt managed to figure out 4gig+ ram is starting to get common, (oh wait we'd prob have to "vote" for it ,to make them realise their own software is using more ram then ever -__- right) they should just enable /largeadressaware already, so the client could use more then the limited 32bit ram use wich SL seem to hit very fast nowadays.

/largeadressaware , does not make SL a 64bit program,it just allow it to detect ram above 2gig and then go "hey lots of ram, lets use it", now its like hitting a wall instead, wich can lead to crashing when it goes near a 32bit program ram use limit, just google it, loads of games that hit 2gig ram limit pretty much either crash or go really slow.

You actually have a similiar pc as im running on

c2d6850,
vista pro 64bit,
Asus P5N32-E SLI bios 1302,
evga 8800gts 640mb , nvidia driver 169.25
4 gig ddr2 800mhz
sblive

I really hate this motherboard tho, it has way to many issues with 4gig+ ram & very nitpicky about the 725~830 mhz range.

I do not have UAC on, and run only nvidia drivers, it has about the same fps as my win xp has, -__- but i dont like vista cause of its bloatware so mostly just on xp instead.

"Oh look pretttehh colors" blergh.

For me it sounds like youre getting the spikes and wierdness cause of this motherboard annoyance with 4gig ram issues, many suggest either setting it over the "hole" wich it has issues with by clocking the ram or lowering it, i had so many issues with it 'till i figured out a timing that it could run on.

Test it with memtest86, any errors and you should try changing the memory speed, cause this MB has big issues with 4gig ram+ timing.


http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=P5N32-E+SLI&SLanguage=en-us

ive used both xp and vista 64, and here is my user guide not only for SL but all programs

install 64 bit windows

look at all the MS bullshit that says "its compatible"

run 32 bit programs, watch them run REALLY SLOW or just plain ol FK-ed up, that is if your lucky enugh to ge them to run at all

format hard disk

return to 32 bit windows

computer works fine

You must be doing something wrong, i used alot of programs in xp/vista 64bit, and theres no diffrence at all, and we have nearly same pc setup to.

Most progs i used with 64bit, even tho they are 32bit, but no diffrent in running them on a 64bit (ok so some of them have native 64bit clients,if i choose to install them)
Bryce
Acad
Maya
Photoshop
3dstudio
Blender
Visualroute
Widecap
&'n more stuff
Just about every mmorpg thats pay to play
Secondlife & more games then i can count right now
Various virus progs, avg, norton, mcaffee, whatever they are named now : p

And havnt seen any diffrence from a 32bit xp/vista.

Well, I have been reading all that you have said. But am still slightly confused. I am more than likely going to get Vista, but having a home built PC with the 4gb of ram am tempted to go to Vista 64Bit.

If i make this move, will Secondlife actually work? In worse case scenarios will i get it to run in compatibility mode? Should i even upgrade?

People who moan about Vista 64 running slow:

UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If it runs slow, you either are running old hardware, or hardware with poor drivers. As has been said, Vista 64 is very picky with drivers. This has f**k all to do with Vista 64 itself but rather to do with the quality of the drivers.

When Vista was just released, games were slower because Nvidia was just starting to make decent drivers but now, over a year later, the drivers are on par with Windows XP and I compared SL both on XP and Vista 64 and guess what? The performance is practically identical.

The only difference is, that Vista uses more memory but we're not talking about Gbs here. You'll have 200Mb or so less memory and that's it. If you only have 1Gb of memory, you shouldn't be running Vista anyway.

You may have noticed Vista 64 bit running a bit slower... but not for me... and certainly not since I applied the SP1, it contains many known issues with network routing etc. My connection speed has been given a new lease of life with Vista 64, running at around 50% faster than before, which wasn't that bad anyway.

To get Vista 64 running as a stable platform, I did have to turn down my AMD Quad core 9.6ghz speed to around 1.8ghz per core. It is a known issue due to voltage fluctuations of the CPU, there is a BIOS update on the horizon so I'm told.

So, what's the most stable SL client for Vista 64 (with an nVidia 8800 Ultra)?

I"m running Vista 64 & SL with 0 slow downs, all it takes is the right drivers.. especially for nvidia boards / video cards. (175.12 drivers for video).

Vista 64 Ultimate
6750 CPU
P5N-D 750i mb
8800GT 512
8 gigs generic memory

9.6GHz, huh, that's one heck of an overclock. It's bound to be a world record ; )

You realize that you can't add the core clock speeds together, right? That's not how it works. Two 2GHz cores do not equal a 4GHz processor. They equal two 2GHz processors.

Unless the program is multi threaded of course. Then it can use all of the cores at full speed. However SL is not one of those multi-threaded apps.

You can use all of the cores at full speed with several applications and some fancy usage of manual processor affinity, but it's still not the same as adding the cores together. It doesn't work like that.

It is entirely possible to double, triple, or quadruple your speed with a well multi-threaded app and a multi-core processor, but yeah, it's just not the same as having an extremely highly clocked processor.

HP dv9700 notebook
intel Core Duo CPU 2.5GHz
4 gigs RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS 512

if the HP site is the only source for device drivers and I have updated..... *whines* WHyyyyyyyyy am i still crashing so much? SL crashed windows WAY too regularly for me to get any work done....

if anyone has an idea or a link for me, I beg your assistance....

What makes you think that HP is the only source for drivers?

Only that the Nvidia site turns me away telling me to download them from hp.com...

Wrong!

Advanced --> Rendering --> [X] Run Multiple Threads

"Nvidia could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware".....

perhaps you could guide me a little further into tha page? I had been there before on the quest to solve the issue and had not found anything, but obviously - if I had found the magic solution i would have posted it, I'm still frustrated by it...

and it's a good thing the folks who post "7 days with no crashes on vista" are out of my arms' reach.....

Please and thank you for all the help provided thus far

I would suggest reading this: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18532

And reading some of the related articles (to be specific, you need a modified INF file to make the driver install. The driver will work for your GPU, but you need to mod the INF to make it install).

If you can't figure it out by reading those forums, then come back here and I'll walk you through it.

So I'm assuming that those with performance concerns under Vista (any kind) have in fact disabled DWM or you are running it full screen (not in a window maximized, but truly full scrfeen). If you have not, please go do some and come back (to disable DWM, set the windows theme to classic). Informal testing among my friends indicates only moderate benefits to those with baseline systems (think laptop). But on my 8800GTX card, it's a whopping 100% increase in framerate. This makes total sense when you think about it.. with DWM enabled, you might as well be running SL AND some other video game simultaneously since the windows desktop is treated as a 3d app. Assuming you don't want to share your video processing power for pretty buttons when in SL, then either disable DWM or run full screen (which temporarily disables it).

That being said, there is some sort of jittering defect in last two RC clients. IN addition, the most recent RC client has I'm guessing some sort of memeory leak as the framerate degrades considerably over time (55-65fps in my house when I first log in... 15-18fps after a few hours).

That information coming from teh 32 bit vista side of the world.

I have not turned off DWM, Brandi. Turning off DWM brings no noticable performance increases on my computer. I also run SL in a window, which lets me use my computer for other things at the same time (same monitor, though, so I'm not quite as efficient as if I was running SL on its own monitor).

DWM itself is very light on the GPU. This is shown by GPU power consumption with DWM enabled and disabled. It has been shown that with DWM enabled, power consumption rises by just a few (as in, two or three) watts, as opposed to playing a game, when a GPU's power consumption can easily rise to over 100 watts (depending on the GPU). In addition, DWM's memory footprint on the adapter is seen as system RAM, and is pageable (meaning, as textures are loaded into video memory, DWM data may be pushed to system RAM, and then to the hard disk page file, as required).

Your performance issues with an 8800GTX lead me to believe that there may be a misconfiguration of some sort, since the 8800GTX should have absolutely no problems running DWM (which treats the desktop as a 3D surface, yes, but is many miles away from being anywhere near the load of a game) and a game, such as Second Life.

Still, if it helps it helps.

EDIT: In fact, after doing a few back and forths, disabling DWM causes a performance loss of 1FPS (which may be within the margin of error, but is is consistent and happens every time).